Social Commentary with particular emphasis on style, parenting, relationships,education and smoking weed

Wednesday, November 3, 2010

Preliminary Analysis of Midterm Results

Pundits will be arguing about what the teabagging victories last night signify - but that's just because they need something to talk about on TV. Sharron Angle did not beat Harry Reid, which only proves that a candidate can have all the corporate and foreign money in the world and still be so repulsive that s/he can't get elected. That he only won by 6% illustrates the single most important factor in these elections: People are stupid. Not just a few people. A shit load of people.

We sick an' tired of-a your ism-skism game -
Dyin' 'n' goin' to heaven in-a Jesus' name, lord.
We know when we understand:
Almighty god is a living man.
You can fool some people sometimes,
But you can't fool all the people all the time.
So now we see the light (what you gonna do?),
We gonna stand up for our rights!

The Ism-Skism game is the very effective tool that Rulers use to Divide and Conquer. Last night, we were conquered again, sort of. An Oompah Loompah is fixing to be Speaker of the House, for Chrissakes and Proposition 19 was defeated along generational lines.

What can you do besides forget about those stupid teabaggers and focus on Being the Change? Truly, that's all anyone can ever do - but it's hard to forget anyone who makes as much noise as the Aqua Buddha. It's time to Turn Off the TV. In fact, it's time to take a Counter Culture lesson from Timothy Leary :

Like every great religion of the past we seek to find the divinity within and to express this revelation in a life of glorification and the worship of God. These ancient goals we define in the metaphor of the present — turn on, tune in, drop out.

As anyone who ever did acid knows, it's best to be in a safe environment when you're tripping. You need to be among friends. I may not be in a position to start tripping right this very minute - and the world out there is so damn depressing that it may be wiser to wait until we're not bumming in the first place. In the meantime, we need to know who and where our friends are. Gathering together, at least virtually, is one way to resist the forces of Isolation that The Establishment requires to keep us in our place: Working for nothing with our heads down and our mouths shut.

Activism is scary because it's not "nice." Jon Stewart may very well have staged a Rehearsal for Revolution by demonstrating that it's safe to come to the Mall - but he was still pretty fucking nice. I'm not saying we should be Mean. We can speak Truth to Power without being abusive. I'm not sure what Bill Ayers would have to say about that since it often appears that Power only starts to listen to Truth once people start blowing up buildings.

I'll figure all this out later. It's time for me to hang out with my little buddies in my classroom. It's a sunny day here in New York City and I haven't taken out the prisms this year. Nothing raises my spirits like prisms and ping pong balls, and I especially love to dump out a bucket of ping pong balls and show little kids how to chuck them in the water table.

Those dumbass teabaggers who got all freaked out about Obama indoctrinating America's school children would be very, very worried to hear a preschool teacher mentioning Bill Ayers and throwing things in the same breath. You better believe we indoctrinate our children - but not to be socialists, exactly. We're trying to build reserves of intellectual curiosity and strength that will help them in the days ahead.

And to the Koch brothers, Ginni Thomas, Rupert Murdoch and all them - even Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan - I say, "Inch by Inch, Motherfuckers."

Yes, yes, yes. I'm with you and the kids and the ping pong balls. It's I and Thou or Us vs. Them. I place myself firmly in the first camp!

... Yikes, here I go, already compartmentalizing. Either/or. Argh! That's what gets us into trouble in the first place, eh!

But even so, there are some things that I suppose we have to be either/or about. One surely is whether we build those reserves you write about or whether we choose to stay stupid. Damn, I'm tired of stupid.

Yes, we should turn off the TV - as Jon Stewart said at the rally. That's the first step. And yes, he was nice, but he was angry too; angry at those who try to divide us. I love "inch by inch" - and it is a good philosophy. I think it is Obama's philosophy. Unfortunately a lot on the left were too impatient with change coming inch by inch, and stayed home instead of voting for Democrats yesterday. The best is, as always, the enemy of the good.

The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world. Conservatives may have won this round, they may win in 2012 but the vast majority of them have one foot in the grave already and the next generation in high school and college is far more liberal than any before.

Mauigirl, I'm glad you were there to see the rally with your own eyes. Dre from WWH went too and came away optimistic.

I've been wondering what Activism and Demonstrations would look like in the internet/twitter age - especially for people in their 20s. There is potential to draw together huge numbers of people but in small, local groups. Like flash mobs. It's an intriguing idea.

Beach, I'm honored to see you here and commenting when you're on Hiatus! You're right - the next generation is key. I'll be glad to see Velvet and the gang up at Tree Hugger this weekend.

Liberality - Glad to do it. We've got to keep each others spirits up in these damn dark days. You raise mine all the time

Mr C, Thank you. I'll be looking to you for photographs and reality checks on my venture into Activism.

I'm here, anytime you get down this way. The next time I come up that direction will be the first week of January, but I'll be on a train headed to a conference in Boston. Where's the halfway point? Philly?

Oh, I hadn't thought about Pat's house. Let me look at my calendar and see if there are any weekends available to scoot up there. I'll have to check with M's calendar too, but she's out of town today, so it may take me a couple days to get back to you. Life's too busy when you have to look at your calendar for a free weekend. Although in my defense, the national and state elections are past and I only worked on a couple campaigns, but our municipal elections are in April and I have my first campaign meeting for that this Sunday. These elections are always the nastiest and most time consuming. Why do I do this to myself?